While popular with conservation groups, coastal easements that prevent development in order to protect marshland from changes brought about by climate change and rising sea levels are not favored by property owners, according ...

With tarpon fishing season at its peak, FIU scientists are tracking the saltwater fish throughout the Florida Everglades. They want to know how water conditions affect some of the state's most lucrative recreational fisheries.

In 2014, a team of researchers led by a paleobiologist from the University of Missouri found that clams from the Holocene Epoch (that began 11,700 years ago) contained clues about how sea level rise due to climate change ...

The world's most extensive study of a major storm front striking the coast has revealed a previously unrecognised danger from climate change: as storm patterns fluctuate, waterfront areas once thought safe are likely to be ...

Reducing greenhouse-gas emissions is not enough to limit global warming to a level that wouldn't risk young people's future, according to a new study by a team of scientists who say we need negative emissions. Measures such ...

A senior scientist from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will discuss the latest climate science, including the potential for higher sea-level rise than previously projected, at ANU on Tuesday.

Current sea level rise

Current sea level rise has occurred at a mean rate of 1.8 mm per year for the past century, and more recently at rates estimated near 2.8 ± 0.4 to 3.1 ± 0.7 mm per year (1993-2003). Current sea level rise is due partly to human-induced global warming, which will increase sea level over the coming century and longer periods. Increasing temperatures result in sea level rise by the thermal expansion of water and through the addition of water to the oceans from the melting of continental ice sheets. Thermal expansion, which is well-quantified, is currently the primary contributor to sea level rise and is expected to be the primary contributor over the course of the next century. Glacial contributions to sea-level rise are less important, and are more difficult to predict and quantify. Values for predicted sea level rise over the course of the next century typically range from 90 to 880 mm, with a central value of 480 mm. Based on an analog to the deglaciation of North America at 9,000 years before present, some scientists predict sea level rise of 1.3 meters in the next century. However, models of glacial flow in the smaller present-day ice sheets show that a probable maximum value for sea level rise in the next century is 80 centimeters, based on limitations on how quickly ice can flow below the equilibrium line altitude and to the sea.